This study is a comprehensive examination of the patterns of adaptive behavior employed by black adolescent-headed families as a means of achieving, maintaining, and improving family well-being. It focuses on the consequences of particular coping styles for immediate and long term family welfare. Family attributes and attitudes which impinge upon these adaptive styles and outcomes are also investigated. The design calls for a series of four interviews with each of approximately thirty couples both of whom were under age twenty at the time of marriage and have been married between six and eighteen months. Information will be obtained concerning patterns of adaptive behavior with reference to housing, transportation, savings, and educational/vocational advancement. Analysis calls for detailed description of coping behavior in these selected areas. In addition, factor analytic techniques will be employed in order to develop a scheme of classification of family coping behavior. The relationship between family characteristics, well-being, and location within this typology is a central concern of this research.